Embedded Smart Plug and Produce Device Adapter (WP2)

The aim of this workpackage is to develop adaptors to enable plug&produce for automation components, ready to cooperate
with the openMOS agent control architecture. One focus will be the development of a high performance embedded control
platform (SoC/FPGA-based). This control platform developed by Elrest will be miniaturised to be integrated into automation
components, e.g., conveyor system from ASYS, Afac, or Inotec. The corresponding functionality (e.g., transport items) has to
be developed and implemented into the control platform. It will be possible to split the implementation of functions into two
parts: C-based developments and FPGA-based developments. A development platform (CODESYS) will be extended to enable
the application engineers to develop their desired application in an easy way and based on an industrial platform (Application
Composer). The functionality of the automation component (e.g., transport system) will be provided in form of skills to the overall
agent architecture.

One of the fundamental aspects of WP2 is the development of a generic interface that enables plug&produce devices to
connect to the Manufacturing Service Bus offering their skills and give feedback about their operational performance data to
higher level planning and execution systems. This interface should allow that higher level components can interact and adapt
the behaviour of the component according to the needs of the overall production goal. This interaction need to be done dynamically
and during full operation of the machines without disturbing the operation of the machine. Therefore the interaction needs
to full-fill real-time constraints and must not harm the real-time behaviour of the machine’s control applications. The information
should support as well the extraction of run-time data that results from the local evaluation of the performance of the implemented
skills and behaviours. This interface is therefore a fundamental component to support the optimisation mechanisms
integrated in WP4.

In principle, the openMOS architecture bases on automation components and subsystems like axis, handling systems, and
other components. More general automation components like axis or handling systems are developed in the German research
project OPAK which is funded by the federal ministry of economics and energy in the research framework “Autonomik Industrie
4.0”. Inotec will focus more on the field of smart sensor systems, enhancing their existing products with embedded control and
extended sensing capabilities. RFID technology will be used as basis to track products and components on the shop floor to
make the link between the product requirements and the processing capabilities offered by plug&produce devices. ASYS for
example will focus in these project developments on the field of visualization and embedded control assisted automation components.

While a basic function for self-awareness will be provided as part of openMOS, more complex models will not be explored as
part of this project. Existing synergies with other EU projects (SelSus and ReBORN) focused on this topic will be exploited to
show case this aspect of the embedded cyber-physical devices approach. It also has to be stressed that the development of the
embedded components will be based on previous development work in the IDEAS project which has successfully proofed the
concept of this approach (TRL4-5). The focus will be on improving the design to a level that allows it to be used in industry (TRL
8).